How to free up vertica raw space after deleting records

Question

We are using Vertica community edition which has raw data limit of 1TB.

recently reached 1 TB raw data limit so we decided to delete some records from all tables. After deletion of old records Vertica still shows Utilization : 104%

dbadmin=> SELECT GET_COMPLIANCE_STATUS();
GET_COMPLIANCE_STATUS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Raw Data Size: 1.04TB +/- 0.10TB
License Size : 1.00TB
Utilization  : 104%
Audit Time   : 2014-09-04 13:05:24.020979-04
Compliance Status : The database is in compliance with respect to raw data size.

No expiration date for a Perpetual license

NOTICE: Recent audits suggests a change in compliance status. We are awaiting additional data points to confirm.
(1 row)

Any idea how to free up that space ?

Answer 1

Rows that were deleted using DELETE are marked for deletion and not immediately removed from physical storage. You need to wait for a mergeout to occur, advance the epoch, or run a PURGE. More information about purging deleted data is available in the documentation.

Answer 2

Besides Kermit's answer...

Since deletes are expensive I used to put data on partitions, based around date, and after archiving the data somewhere else I would drop the partition.